Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A Malaysian BIG BANG!

2008 started with a big bang with fireworks almost everywhere. For some Malaysians it was an even bigger bang of a shocking kind when the nation's popular highly competent Health Minister had his secret affair exposed and he confessed to it! What comic relief after a year of grisly murders, human rights violations, fiscal scandals, tragedies, demonstrations, ISA detentions, political harassment, bigotry, racism and religious injustice!

Iran. Sister-in-law. Kama Sutera. Designer Vaginas. ChuaJuiMeng. Curse. Chinese Mafia. Lingam. These were like a jumble of words that may seem unassociated to the Health Minister DatukSri Dr. ChuaSoi Lek's scandalous sex escapade. But they seem connected in some ways and I'll tell you how.

Call it synchronism or whatever you want.

Before the first whiff of the sex scandal and the compact discs hit the Johore streets I was either coming across these words or brandishing these words verbally and electronically.

Iran: I read about the pitiful girl who was stoned to death for merely appearing in an x-rated movie shot secretly in that Islamic nation. The religious police zealously tracked her down after recording the reading of her exposed electricity meter in the movie! Here we have a filmed consensual nefarious act that ended in a rather painfully agonising slow inhuman death by stoning.

My sister-in-law. After not having any desire to speak to this shrewd Johore businesswoman, with a late dad who was a datuk there, we finally were on speaking terms. Yes, Dr. Chua is from Johore.

Kama Sutera: I was referring to this famous ancient sex manual as the book I consider as my favorite to read. I was encouraging others to pick up the book! So the minister was having some adult acrobatic fun as depicted in it...

Designer Vaginas: I came across the Newsweek article about the dangers and risks involved in having surgical procedures performed on the female genitalia on a commercial scale. It wasn't necessary to have it all done, and problems could arise. Surgically done or not-for powerful men to fall into sexual addiction...there's sexual power to all of you ladies as in the minister's case!

ChuaJui Ming: Another Chua who came to Miri recently, proclaimed the good Word and sharing the testimony of how his son was saved from the clutches of evil men when a stranger appeared to help him escape. This is the Chua who was the predecessor of the present scandalous Chua.

Curse: Someone wrote in MMalaysiakiniabout the curse of the Health Ministership position. All the Chinese who were in that position ended their political lives except Tan Sri Dr. Chong Hon Nyan who ended up in another smaller political post before retiring shortly after that. The position seemed to have a jinx I suppose!

Chinese Mafia:I was also recommending a book about the Chinese mafia... and explaining away the oaths that these secret triads make to protect the Organization. Is there a sinister underworld connection in this scandal? Maybe not-the Truth Is Out There!

Last but not least, the word 'lingam': When the scandal broke about the secret recording of judiciary shenanigans, I was told by an Indian buddy that lingam also means phallus. This was an astonishing revelation and so it seems to me, there's a Cosmic Joker who is showing me this superior being has concocted everything to create one big scandal to titillate Malaysians.

For those who are still curious about the actual hankypanky stuff that mainstream media teasingly hints at, here are the juicy details extracted from Malaysiakini-the news portal with guts!

THE TAPE

According to those who have watched the tape, there were two separate DVDs depicting the alleged sex act purportedly recorded using closed circuit television (CCTV).

The first DVD lasting 56 minutes showed the entire sexual act from four different camera angles showing the bed, main door and living room.

Labelled as ‘(name of politician deleted) rapes and threatens woman’, a man can be seen walking into a room believed to be in a hotel and engages in sex with apparently a woman in her 30s.

Meanwhile, the second disc lasting 44 minutes was labelled ‘(name of politician deleted) sex video’ and featured the same sex act from a sole stationary camera that zoomed into the bed.

The couple can be seen in the video speaking in the Hokkien dialect.

The video clip begins with the politician in the room taking a shower and changing clothes. A woman later knocks on the door and is seen entering the room. The couple appears to know each other.

The video then shows the woman taking out a laptop and placed it on the bed, and then going into the bathroom and emerging later naked.

The woman then performs oral sex on the politician and this is followed by sexual intercourse on bed. The couple appears to be watching something, perhaps pornography, on the laptop during their sexual act.

Here's an added bonus about the star of the scandalous sex escapade as reported in Malaysiakini.

Long political career

Chua, a trained psychologist, began his medical career as a government doctor in 1974 before moving into private practice two years later.

The senior politician, who hailed from Johor, was first elected state assemblyman for Penggaram in his home state in 1986. He held Penggaram for 18 years – winning the state seat in four consecutive general elections.

Chua was a Johor executive councilor - in charge of various profolios - for 14 years from 1990 to 2004.

He moved to federal-level politics in the 2004 general elections when he was picked to run for Labis, a parliamentary constituency near Segamat which was vacated by outgoing MCA chief Dr Ling LiongSik.

Soon after the general elections, he was also picked by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as health minister, a much-coveted cabinet post.

From there, Chua moved up the party hierarchy at lighting speed – he bagged the second highest number of votes to become one of the four vice-presidents in the 2005 MCA polls.

Here's the additional straight-faced Newsweek article...

The perils of 'designer vaginas'

As more women undergo cosmetic vaginal procedures, experts warn that such surgery may not be safe or effective

By Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert for NewsweekSeptember 19, 2007

Women are being urged to be careful down there when it comes cosmetic vaginal procedures. We've become a society obsessed with the quest for physical perfection. If you don't like the nose (or ears or lips or breasts) you were born with, there's a solution: find a doctor and get it fixed. Last year Americans underwent nearly 11 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. That's an increase of 7 percent from the previous year and more than 400 percent from a decade ago. Clearly, the idea of altering nature's plan for your appearance is now widely accepted. But are there parts of your body that should be off limits?

Some doctors think so. Last week the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Committee on Gynecologic Practice issued a statement to its members warning about the dangers of trying to create "designer vaginas" through procedures that purport to trim and slim the vaginal lips, tighten the vagina or add extra bounce to the G-spot with injectable materials like collagen. Over the past few years these procedures have been marketed in magazines and over the Internet largely as boosts to sexual satisfaction, turning labiaplasty (the technical name for surgery that snips the vaginal lips, or labia) into one of the fastest-growing procedures. Labiaplasty is sometimes necessary for medical reasons--if there's a problem with urination, for example. But doctors say those cases are not the reason for the surge. Although there are no firm numbers on how many procedures were performed last year, doctors around the country report more and more requests from patients for purely cosmetic changes. When there's no medical reason for these surgeries, they're not covered by insurance and can cost patients as much as USD $10,000.

Not so long ago, the main clientele for cosmetic vaginal procedures was sex workers and nude entertainers, but with the increasing popularity of bikini waxes, women have become more aware of the appearance of their vaginas, and a growing number seem to feel they don't measure up. Others worry that they don't enjoy sex as much after pushing a baby out the birth canal; they hope that tightening their vaginas will restore the thrill. In many cases women say that they began to question the look of their vaginal area after a comment from a male partner who had been influenced by images in sexually explicit magazines or movies. Doctors say they're seeing women of all ages--even in their 60s and 70s--who want vaginal makeovers.

But the peril may be much greater than prospective patients realize, ACOG warns. "What we're concerned about is that there is no safety or efficacy data for these procedures," says Dr. Cheryl Iglesia, a member of the committee that issued the statement and the director of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. "There are no studies in peer-reviewed journals that show long-term outcomes." The vast majority of these procedures are not medically indicated, Iglesia says, and women could end up in worse shape than when they started because of complications like severe pain from scarring by lasers used on the vaginal wall, decreased lubrication or incontinence. In the statement, the ACOG committee warned that "patients who are anxious or insecure about their genital appearance or sexual function may be further traumatized by undergoing an unproven surgical procedure with obvious risks."

ACOG says that women who are contemplating this kind of questionable procedure need to understand that there's a great variety in the appearance of the vaginal area--just as there is in any other part of the body--and most of those differences are well within the normal range, which means they do not require medical intervention. "You can have [vaginal] lips that are a few millimeters to a few centimeters," Iglesia says. "It's all normal. You don't have to look like a Playboy bunny down there." And a tighter vagina is no guarantee of a better time in bed. "There is real potential that you could make your sex life worse," she says. "You can't just say we will tighten it up and it will work better." Female sexual satisfaction is dependent on a wide range of factors. "It's not just the size of the vagina," Iglesia says. "There's a lot more involved, including nerves, blood supply and lubrication" as well as the critical emotional components of sexual satisfaction.

Women considering cosmetic vaginal surgery might also want to read up on the international campaign against female genital mutilation, procedures among some African, Middle Eastern and Asian cultures that often involve cutting or stretching of the labia and inserting corrosive substances into the vagina to make it tighter or narrower. Sound familiar? The World Health Organization and UNICEF, among others, have been actively lobbying for the elimination of genital mutilation, which may be performed on infants, children and teenagers. While this campaign continues to make progress, women in this country are paying doctors for what many think is a high-tech version of the practice. It's something to think about.

Having said and shared all these stuff, let me come back to the present scandal: I admire the good doctor. He has done much for the public with his new policies, cutting a lot of red tape, thus creating a more efficient service to the ordinary Joe.

How tragic it is that a rising star who has fallen between the political cracks will not be given a second Clinton chance. Who knows what this affable statesman could have achieved if he ever holds the reign of Chinese power through the powerful Barisan main partner, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA). Perhaps he could be as famous as Clinton during his presidency of the United States.

One thing is for sure: by admitting his marital indiscretion and resigning from all offices, Dr. Chua has proven himself to be honorable, decisive, courageous and wise after a lapse in judgment. He should not be condemned by anyone else as every person has his or her own vices. We remember our loving Christ as saying to the "holier than thou" hypocritical religious persons who were about to stone to death someone who was accused of adultery in the old days this: "Let he who has no sin cast the first stone". Everyone quickly disappeared!

Who knows, our Cosmic Joker will pull this rare leader out politically as a hat trick in future after entertaining Malaysians with this amazing hilarious joke on the first day of 2008! Oh yes, my memorable Year of the Rat!